


Hush

by drvology



Category: Batman (Unspecified canon), Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-11
Updated: 2011-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drvology/pseuds/drvology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing but tightness, stranglehold, and he tastes copper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hush

**Author's Note:**

> B:TAS is my favorite Batverse incarnation; it's become my default setting when imagining the characters &c. That established, I think the fic I write can be aptly labeled 'canon & time nonspecific.'  
> → Written in an hour for 60_minute_fics challenge group @ LJ || 060807 Prompt #1 _Silence is golden. Either write a fic with absolutely no dialogue, or somehow incorporate a character's sudden and unexpected loss of speech into the story._

His eyes are huge--painfully so--and he can't get the words out. Needs to yell, to warn, to find Batman and safety and get away. Robin gapes, grapples with breath and his throat continues to swell, dry burn and sandpaper. He writhes, slaps his palm on the concrete floor; the sound is dull, barely penetrates the cavernous warehouse and haze of green poison that fills it.

Thin tears leak from his eyes in a constant stream, escape down his temples and well against his nose. It hurts to breathe and even with his eyes open he can't see. Robin's tongue feels three sizes grown, thick and useless and hot. He spins on the small of his back, kicks out, finds purchase and keeps kicking until the steel drum teeters then tips, crashes into the next and the next and the next.

As they roll he's screaming--top of his lungs mouth split wide fingers splayed on the ground so he can arch up and fill and fill himself with air--and nothing comes but a strangled, pitiful squeak.

"Batman!" he cries, deafening in his mind and blank to the world.

Robin wrenches onto his side, thinks about the hundred push-ups Bruce makes him do every day as his arms shake, and he forces himself up and up until he's fighting a swimming head and heavy insides, leaning back against a stack of palettes.

Too late--noticed too late in too early--Batman hadn't dropped yet and as he landed from the hole they'd punched in the roof, the Joker's goons had launched grenades. Robin had been inoculated from the laughing, from the mania, but the terrible cloying smoke was toxic all the same, tore through his skin and seared his membranes.

There's drool on his chin and as he staggers to his feet and he's ripping himself apart trying desperately to call out. To find Batman. To be found. The pallets sway--maybe he's swaying--and he tips forward, barely catches himself on the corner of something hard and unforgiving covered over with rough canvas tarp.

Robin makes three steps then he's on his hands and knees, thinks this is okay he's below the noxious cloud isn't that what he was taught, and he starts to blur and fade as he scrabbles around in circles. He has no idea where to go and what of Batman, how to get their way free.

His head pounds and he crawls until he finds the wall, follows it, shoulder bumping the corrugated metal grooves as he lurches, falls, stubbornly lifts and starts again. Breathing has become a struggle and his fingers are locked in tight curls and he's yelling, yelling, yelling brutal soundlessness.

He breaks forward into cold, glorious air and biting wind, blessed relief and he's about to pass out. Robin hauls himself standing using the wobbly track that shuttles the loading dock door. He sucks in air, spits and weeps and his nose runs slip-slick snot tinged pink with blood.

"Batman!" he tries, a last time, searches past tear blindness and red-rimmed eyes almost fused shut. It's just movement, rasp of parched lips. Robin's stomach knots and he's nearly felled with a rush of sudden, furious panic.

He's going down, stumbles away and away, can't even think about where the Joker escaped to, this night, if they failed or how he'll feel in the morning. If he makes it that far. There's nothing but tightness, stranglehold, and he tastes copper as he chews his tongue trying to scream past it.

"Robin!"

One word, two syllables, loud and heady with fear and protective savagery.

He slumps, pitches, and Batman gathers him in strong and steady arms.

"Robin," Batman whispers, hands down his arms, over his torso, checking and rechecking.

He manages to look up, take quick stock. Batman's in a gasmask, blue eyes so dark because of sheer terror, barely checked violence, the cut of relief. Robin dusts his fingertips over hard plastic, back until they fit between the mask and cowl to touch bare skin.

Batman rips it off, white lines that quickly redden from the harsh, uncaring strip-away. He kisses the tingling numbness of Robin's cheek, eyes, lips. "Robin," he breathes, face bent to rest on the rise of Robin's brow. "Hold on."

Robin nods, tips his head so he can push a clumsy kiss into Batman's palm cupping his jaw. Batman lifts him, fits the mask over his mouth. Cool, pure oxygen tempts him, soothes the sizzle and itch that squirms through him. He's carried to the Batmobile, run hard and fast, sheltered in the embrace of cape and steely determination.

Batman secures him, strokes his hair, kisses him a last time then fires the turbines. Robin succumbs, then, drops into the muffled bliss of unconsciousness and knowing Batman will make it all better, again. That he and Bruce are safe and alive.


End file.
